


everything i wanted

by Rupzydaisy



Series: the haruspices sing on [10]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Collection of one shots, F/M, Fake Dating, Missing Scenes, Secret dating, fluff and domestic fluff, masriel, mentions of Lyra, pre-series and post series, pre-trial conversation and angst, slight gone girl au, tropes and prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-02-23 05:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23006344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: a collection of (sometimes soft) masriel one-shots from a trope-prompt fill on tumblr
Relationships: Lord Asriel & Lyra Belacqua, Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter
Series: the haruspices sing on [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609966
Comments: 19
Kudos: 53





	1. if you say so

**Author's Note:**

> i'm making my way through a prompt fill list i found on tumblr, and i want to keep things in one place, so basically... anything longer than a one shot will have it's own chapter
> 
> trope: not so secret dating

It almost seemed funny, sneaking off to the library just after the clocks’ struck midnight, with Asriel in tow. They could put rows and rows of bookshelves between them and the world, with no worry of being overheard or overlooked. The last of the servants had been sitting in the kitchen waiting for the fire to die down when they were interrupted by a bolshy demand for two bottles of Tokay to be handed over.

The first had been drunk on the stairs leading up to the roof and the observation tower, but the steps had been steep, and so they’d quickly turned around. The second bottle had been drunk as they sat in a nook between buildings, waiting for the candles to be snuffed in the main building. Finally, Asriel had pulled out his hip flask, and even though she didn’t particularly like the taste of the whiskey, she didn’t mind it as much when it kept the night air from sinking into her skin. 

He snorted as Marisa leaned in after the first few sips, and then quickly pulled her to her feet. “No, not here. Inside.”

The buildings tilted from side to side, and she let out a huff of laughter, as the whiskey sank in and lifted away any lingering trepidation of being caught seen with Asriel Belacqua of all people. “If you say so.”

Her hand was hot in his, and the heat had spread right throughout her from head to toe. They made it halfway down the corridor before she had barrelled into him, unwilling to have his face turned from hers. Her hip smashing against his side and her hands reaching out to clasp his face, bringing it closer to hers until Marisa felt more like a blazing fire than a woman. Her teeth bit into his bottom lip, anticipating him to give in to her. When Asriel did, she pressed herself closer to him and her jaw and cheek knocked against his ungraciously.

There was a rumble from Stelmaria, and Marisa felt the spike of longing from her own daemon. If he was in touching distance, she would have pinched him, but for the moment it was only Asriel under her hands. Her fingers wound into his hair and then she reached down to slip a hand over his shoulder and fumbled with the buttons at the top of his shirt.

“Oh, sorry, sorry. Excuse me! I’m just- going to get past.”

The voice made her freeze, and Asriel’s hands on her back and hips suddenly lifted away. The disappearance was replaced with a sudden surge of annoyance.

Marisa looked over her shoulder to see a short, dowdy woman carrying a stack of books and struggling to keep her satchel on her shoulder at the same time. She weaved awkwardly around the two daemons blocking the middle of the corridor, and her own little chaffinch teetered on her shoulder, bopping his blue head up and down in embarrassment.

Her irritation faded slowly as she stared at the woman retreating down the corridor. Then Marisa turned to Asriel with narrowed eyes and whispered loudly, “Do you think she noticed?”

He stared back at her, whiskey-drunk with red lipstick smeared across his cheek and mouth from where she had glued herself to him. “I don’t know.”

She swayed on the spot, heels and toes missing the floor alternatively until his hands landed back on her waist. “I think she might have noticed.”

A small frown appeared between Marisa’s eyebrows, pulling them down and wrinkling her nose up. It only deepened when there was an inhuman snort from Stelmaria. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see how her own monkey’s tail flicked back and forth. She opened her mouth to protest or hiss, or something, but then Asriel seemed to have cottoned on to her original idea and tugged her onwards, towards the empty library where there was definitely no one else around to interrupt them.


	2. the good side of you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trope: defending each other to scathing tertiary or otherwise minor characters but ONLY WHEN THE OTHER ISN’T AROUND

“You’ll have to excuse me, I must speak with the Duke of Kent!” Asriel said as he bounded off without bothering to take his leave from the group. 

A stunned silence follows, like the calm after shutters blown open in a thunderstorm. Marisa rolls her eyes as the drama he always seems to leave in his wake while she waits for the conversation to pick up again. 

A blustery chuckle from old Peter Norton broke the hush and the jealous glint in his eyes leaks out from beneath his white bushy eyebrows. “All that time in the North appears to have shed what little decorum he had! You know he communes with Gyptians, given them access to his land, when he ought to have run them right out. _Madness_ , I say." 

The man tutted loudly; fingers tucked into his satin waistcoat. When he got a full range of raised eyebrows and half-smiles from the small circle, it was clear they had only managed to inflate his ego. 

"I have sympathy for the Duke of Kent, no doubt the poor fellow will be lambasted with half charming words aimed to pry him of his good gold…not to mention his hare-brained plans to travel North _again_. He’s like an unwelcome boomerang here in London." 

A couple of well-dressed women in the loose circle titter, and although Marisa agrees with his last statement, the rest of his words irk her more than Asriel’s bad habits and bristling personality. _Hypocrite_ , she thinks with a clenched fist held by her side. By her feet, her daemon scraped a single claw against the marble floor. 

And because of it, she can’t help but speak up.

"As loathe as I am to say it, no matter how madcap his ideas may appear, we theoretical scholars cannot deny that Asriel’s work in theoretical physics is within our remit. Even if it does lead to potentially heretical topics of thought, it is the expansion of knowledge we cannot live without." 

It’s the kind of backhand compliment Marisa relishes in dishing out, feels it stick to the very roof of their conversation and hang there, like a new sword of Damocles. To deny it would be call oneself stupid, and she savours the quiet unsurety it brings to their small circle.

When Norton gives a little cough to wrestle back attention, she quickly puts a stop to it with a half-smile of her own before continuing, "Asriel is a uniquely brilliant explorer, capable of great work far more than whatever pitiful publication you’ve churned out. But correct me if I’m wrong, and your last journal article truly is at the leading edge of theoretical physics.”

There was a stifled choke from the woman beside Marisa, and she felt a rush of adrenaline as she watched Norton’s face slowly turn red. But in her opinion, there was no point in sticking a knife in unless it was going to be well and thoroughly twisted.

“I’d argue that his work on the Ruskov particles has brought an understanding which the rest of us, present company included, have used to further our own work.” She widened her eyes, in mock-realisation, “In fact, shouldn’t you be looking to speak to him, to see how much of your _good_ gold would be of help of his latest expedition?”

Norton, speechless and embarrassed, made a hasty retreat towards the far edge of the room after that, just as Asriel rejoined the group. “What did I miss?” 

“Nothing interesting.” Marisa replied curtly, reaching for a glass of red wine from a passing waiter, and she quickly steered the conversation to the newest exhibition arriving at the Arctic Institute in a matter of days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tropes 3 & 5 are included in my other fic 'in another time'


	3. play the fool for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trope: fake dating

“I can’t fathom it.” Marisa says as she pats down her scarf and readjusts her necklace. “Any woman who consents to this really must be taking pity on you.”

“And tonight, that woman is you.” Asriel reaches in to help her out of the car.

“Yes, I’m here. On your arm." Marisa slips her hand over his forearm, taking care to brush her jewel encrusted bracelet over the fabric and snag against as many threads as possible.

Then she heaves out a sigh, and says, "But it’s only for the chance to meet the other guests. Don’t get carried away now, Asriel, or you’ll give yourself a conniption.”

He mutters something under his breath and a ripple of general discontent rolls through his arms. For a moment, she thinks he might snap back at her, and prepares another remark to toss at him, but to her dismay he appeared to get over it and stepped forward, guiding them both slowly to join the queue of people walking up to the house.

All the other guests were making their way up the main path in pairs or groups, chatting and calling out greetings as they passed through the black marble doorway. Standing just inside the doorway with a glass of whiskey in one hand and his magpie daemon on his shoulder, was their host, Sir Geoffrey de Villers. He waved them over, impatient to greet Asriel, and with their arms linked together, the two of them walked on. 

As they approached, Marisa frowned, fighting the urge to dig her nails into his arm. Her eyes followed Stelmaria as she flicked her tail and leisurely padded up the steps. It was _always_ a show, even now. 

It rankled her that they had to play fools in love for a man guided less by the virtues of scientific discovery and more by the little gems of intrigue. If there was a societal secret, he would of course know, but never breathe a word until it was common knowledge, preferring to be the first in the know, much like a librarian of gossip. His bizarre social proclivities for having no solo guests meant she had to pressure Asriel to take her with him after his latest invitation.

Her daemon looks up at her with his dark eyes, dragging his paws over the immaculately laid front path, and she feels his general discontent and the more pointed annoyance of having to play pretend smothering it. 

Marisa agrees, she _should_ have been important enough to invite in the first place. 

“I mean, it’s not as if you could have come alone, _dear._ ” Asriel whispers, picking up on her mood.

Unable to fight the feeling anymore, she snorts back loudly and notes a few heads turning to see the source of the noise. “I should have.”

“I can always take you home _right now_ , Marisa.” He hissed back through a clenched smile. 

Her whisper tickles against his face, and she can feel how it rattles him. A hot, sticky feeling rises in the pit of her stomach. “You wish.”

Asriel pushes back immediately as they reach the top of the stairs and enter the mansion, pressing his cheek and lips to the side of her face with a false stumble. He caught himself gracefully, careful not to unbalance her in her high heels as they hit the marble flooring. 

“Wonderful, wonderful to see you both here this evening!” Geoffrey de Villers told them with a grin, noting how closely they leaned up against each other.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Marisa’s shook his hand, noting how the man’s magpie daemon edged closer, carefully studying the lack of distance between her daemon and his snow leopard.

She exchanged a look of warning with her date for the evening, turning away quickly when Asriel’s face was too close to hers, and the feeling in her chest swells, “Wonders never cease.”


	4. you already know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trope: finishing each other’s sentences, KNOWING WHAT THE OTHER IS ABOUT TO SAY

“Asriel, we need to talk.”

Marisa walked up the ramp into the airship’s hold where he was loading up their packed crates. Her daemon bounded up the smooth metal gangplank ahead of her and then leapt over the stacked boxes to where the tips of Stelmaria's ears poked up. Although out of sight, she could feel the warmth of his happiness and the eagerness to be in the snow leopard's presence again. 

They had stockpiled enough to last them two months in the middle of the Arctic winter, including everything from supplies to a small box of treats for their precocious five-year-old daughter who would no doubt need distracting from the lack of activities at the small research facility.

“I was thinking the same thing.” Asriel replied tersely as he set down the large metal container filled with furs. “I mean, we need to consider Lyra-”

“And the best thing about taking her north-”

“I mean having the child there with us-” Asriel began, and then ran a hand over his face. “Having her around is important, I _understand_ that but perhaps we ought to consider the practicalities of taking a girl, who cares about nothing more than climbing onto surfaces twice her height-”

“She’ll be underfoot.” Marisa blurted out, and Asriel blinked. “What? She will, and you know it. They’ll be nothing for her to do, and only us for company, and I can’t imagine we’ll be productive if we have to entertain her. Don’t think bad of me, please, but can you imagine?”

The apples of her cheeks reddened, and she leant up to press a kiss to his lips, almost apologetically. 

“I-” Asriel paused, and let out a long sigh from the breath he had been holding in. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“You were?” Her own sigh of relief turned into a small chuckle that matched his.

“The _why’s_ and _how’s_ and _what does this do_ , of course. I was thinking instead of bringing her with us-”

"Oxford?" 

"The Master protested a little when I placed a baby in his arms the first time around, but I’ve written to him, and he’s interested in the application of our work. Of Dust, even if he won’t say it outright. He’s intrigued about my proposal for support.”

Marisa’s lip curled upwards, and she was surprised at her own sense of humour. “Scholastic sanctuary, _really_ Asriel?”

“And your idea was better?" 

"St Sophia’s has some of my old colleagues returning over the winter break. They would enjoy the challenge of keeping up with Lyra’s energy and leaps of thought.” Her smirk deepened and lit a mischievous spark in her eyes. 

“She’d run rings around them, my love.” He leaned in closer, trading a kiss and feeling the bite of her teeth nipping on his bottom lip. “But why not Jordan?”

When her teeth sunk in, not hard enough to draw blood, he winced. 

“Jordan? For what?” She leaned back to look him in the eye, entirely unimpressed by his idea.

“Why not?”

“Because-”

“It’ll be different.” Asriel countered, brushing his nose against her cheek, feeling her breathing become shallower. “They did right by her before. Besides Lyra is Jordan, through and through. Nothing can change that.”

“I know. I know." 

Marisa was silent for a long time, until she slowly wound her fingers into his shirt lapels. "She’ll wrap them around her little finger. Scholars and kitchen staff alike. I saw it myself, they didn’t dote on her like I did, like I wanted to, but their eyes followed her. I could tell that she loved being there…she was bored, like any child would be, but she loved Jordan.”

“You think we owe it to her?" 

"In a way, I imagine we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can be read as a continuation of my other masriel au fics:  
> 1) of mustard-seeds and heart secrets  
> 2) in another time


	5. they say that the world was built for two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> au where things go differently at the arctic window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trope: fucking. Now or Never Kiss (AKA undying declaration of loooooove)

“There’s more than their narrow world view. More than their rules.” Asriel speaks as he’s always done, with vengeance stoked from the pits of his own miserable immorality, and Marisa hates him for it.

She breathes heavily and silently blames the steep incline of her final climb to the summit. When she shakes her head, it’s to try to keep the idea from infecting her, because it was fine for him to do this, to deal in these poisonous, blasphemous ideas, but she had a tightrope to walk.

There were answers she’d rather choke on if she returned to the Magisterium empty handed. More than that, there were too many expectant men waiting for her to bring back his head on a platter, too many who would prefer to see hers in its place if she didn’t pull through. 

Marisa tries to drag her arms back, but he holds onto her elbows tight, keeping her there in the light spilling out from the tear in the world. She can feel an impossible warmth bleeding through her exposed skin and there is a difference in the air. The harsh, blankness of the Arctic ice had been pushed aside, and she can smell the difference. All she wants to do back away, from the knowledge, from the edge of the world, from the light and the unknown, secure in knowing how the snow under her feet could be compacted and traversed. 

When she tries to move again, Asriel darts around and takes hold of her waist, wrapping his arms tight as a vice. She hears a mirroring yelp as Stelmaria clamped her jaws around the scruff of her daemon’s neck, and no matter how wildly he twisted, he was held tight. Although Marisa urged him to fight harder, his tail hangs limp with the snow leopard’s teeth so close to his neck.

It’s not a threat, not from Stelmaria, but she knows exactly what mad thought has taken hold of Asriel. 

He walks backwards as Marisa struggles to get loose, and one step at a time, he drags her through the tunnel of light and into the other world until her boots stop kicking grooves into thick snow and instead skid uselessly against cobblestones. 

“Marisa! Look!" 

Even as Asriel spins her around, she wants nothing more than to claw at his face. She wants to claw at it until she’s rented him through entirely with her bare nails, hating the glaring fact that _he_ , of all people, was right. 

A scream of rage erupts from her throat but as Marisa turns, she sees the world behind him, illuminated in daylight, with the sun of another world shining bright above them. Her hands are half-raised, and he catches them as she swipes as him. The warm breeze moves her curls. It doesn’t stab her throat or bite at her cheeks, and she falters. 

Asriel has a smug grin, as expected, but he leans back, tugging at her sleeves again. "Come with me, my love. We can tear down the world and remake it. Tear down all of the walls stopping us.”

It tempts her further along an old, familiar path she had followed him down once before, only now when she looks up, barely breathing and barely blinking into the golden sunlight to feel it prickle her skin, it leaves her in an awe she didn’t think existed. He had pulled her out of the world where the rules that dictated, she was nothing more than a tainted, ruined woman, and she had entered a new one where she was wrong rather than wronged lay before her. 

Now she had to decide if she wanted to walk back into it. She can’t bear the thought of subjecting herself to it, knowing that she had once held a different future in her grasp, stood with a new world under her feet. Her fear seems insignificant, and her regrets loom vastly behind her, to have them no longer follow. 

Marisa hesitates before she asks, “All of it?

"All of it.” Asriel repeats as he lowers her hands, entwining his fingers with hers, drawing her close again until she could feel the pulse in his wrists match the beating of her own heart and their breaths mingled. 

The small fiery pit inside her heart flares with the elusive feeling of revenge she had only tasted briefly when proving her worth while setting up the General Oblation Board threatens to engulf her completely, and the temptation to prove herself in another way grows larger. 

“And Lyra?”

“You really want her?”

The creases around his eyes deepen, and she marvels at his uncertainty. They had both changed in their time apart; his wounds had festered and the pain had driven him further into recklessness, while she had desperately worked to piece herself together and erase the flaws. 

Because when Marisa thinks of her daughter, it seems like her heart would burst. There is a resounding keen from her daemon, now released from Stelmaria’s jaws and sitting on his haunches in the warm sunlight. Out of all of them, he looks more touched by the light with living gold rippling across his fur. 

“Yes, more than _anything_." 

She puts his wail into words, fingers gripping tighter, knowing that Asriel would understand; having Lyra back was a non-negotiable term. 

Marisa had tracked his visits to Jordan over the years, jealousy and spite mingling as she was brought scraps of news. He had often spent longer there than what would have been needed for short meetings with the Master and schmoozing dinners for funding. And it wasn’t spent in the library or debating with the scholars; he had spent it with Lyra and had glimpses into her childhood, stolen moments in a way she hadn’t been able to.

He was a failure of a man and a father, and she had that mirror held up to her for too long without a chance to turn away and try something other than forcing society to readmit her. She _was_ a failure of a woman and a mother. Yet they both wanted to know their child. If they were aligned on this, on Lyra, then perhaps, not even the Authority could help those who were foolish enough to stand in their way. 

"Then who would stop us? We decide what we deserve. Their rules mean nothing, Marissa, not when there is true freedom." 

She would always falter, and her traitor heart would quicken whenever she saw him, no matter how much she tried to harden it, they knew each other too well. There was a sliver of love left for him, despite the mammoth efforts to quash it. The ice in her veins, long frozen and jarring against the soft tissue of her heart, _melts,_ and then she can’t help herself. 

"Marissa?”

She answers with a forceful kiss. Her lips envelop his mouth and she pressed herself close until Asriel’s hands fist into her hair and clutch around her shoulders. Her mouth parts and when she breathes in, she tastes bitter smoke leaf but the moment is somehow sweet. She burns and burns and burns under his touch and doesn’t break away until she’s dizzy and breathless. 

Marisa hears his snow leopard purring contentedly first, and when she finally opens her eyes to look at his, she falls into the blue depths again, with the sunlight of another world warning her face. 


	6. chivalry fell on its sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pre-trial snapshot...i'm just here, imagining these two with like more than one iota of *understanding* (but one iota isn't enough guys)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yessss i'm using a hozier song lyrics as a chapter title  
> trope: tou chi NG!!!! FOr eheA DS!!!!!!11!!

"Please wait in here until you're called by the clerk. And my apologies for the wait, Lord Belacqua, we're short of rooms today. As you know."

The clipped voice of the court runner put Marisa's teeth back on edge, but it was Asriel's,  _ fine, fine,  _ that made her stomach turn violently. She hadn’t heard his voice in months and only seen his face occasionally under news articles following the trial. She waited for the door to close before turning around to look at him. 

When she did, it was not a sight she was expecting. 

The neatly pressed suit and trousers, plain grey silk tie, and shined shoes were all testament to Thorold’s good work. He was presentable to the court and to the masses gathered outside to see the trial. But it couldn't straighten out the heaviness that had sunken into his frame, or the dark circles under his eyes that had come from the circling vultures looking for scraps from a man that had finally crossed a line they could keel haul him over. 

But Marisa was prepared for it. 

She had worked hard over the past weeks to carefully put herself together, put out word to those in the right circles so that they were well aware of her crisis and her turn towards a greater piety under the guidance of Father Holten. All in all, she was in a much better state than he was. Whatever the trial would do in tearing her down, it wouldn't be able to diminish her new path, and the future she was geared to have further down it. 

Her daemon looked at her with his dark eyes and stretched out his thin fingers imperceptibly, gaze darting between the slumped snow leopard and man. It made a hot, sticky feeling well up in the pit of her stomach. She hated it. Hated him. Hated everything. 

Instead of standing up and walking out of the room, Marisa cleared her throat, not sure what she would say, but more to try and shift the lump that had settled there. Then she stood stiffly, and her black, matronly shoes clapped against the tiled floor as she walked over to him. 

"It's you." Asriel sighed heavily as he saw her, and she wasn't sure moving closer to sit opposite him was a good idea, but she did it anyway. 

Stelmaria growled, low and vicious as her bared teeth, ready to sink into her daemon's outstretched paw. It rankled her, to see the genuine desire to offer comfort be turned away, but for once, the desire to find some peace with the only other person in the world who understood what she was going through struck true. 

The plastic seating was more uncomfortable just in his presence and Marisa made an effort not to shift to try and get comfortable. Now wasn't the time for it. The trial would begin soon, accusations would fly, and there would be no place for regrets. 

"You should say whatever you have to say," she tells him quietly. "It's what I did."

"You would have done it anyway. You always think about your own skin." 

The truth was supposed to hurt, but it didn't touch her. Or maybe it wasn't supposed to be a barbed remark, just a mere reflection of who she was. 

"I mean it." Asriel scoffed, distant and bitter. 

He seemed drenched in it, like he had been sculpted out of the two only recently. When he looked up at her again, fists balled on his thighs, like he wanted to raise them against her, or to pummel his way out of the wooden room and find some escape beyond the court's walls. 

"I mean it, Asriel. I do. Say what you have to." 

"Is it supposed to be a consolation? Do you even regret it? Or did you want this to happen?

Like a moth to his flame she had danced in the glow of his arrogance and boldness. It had burned. 

She felt the cold now more than ever as he looked away. 

"Want this?"

"This generosity isn't like you, Marisa. You're rid of him now, and the blame will fall where it falls, but not on you." 

"There's plenty of blame here! If only you could stop thinking about yourself for more than one moment." 

She regrets it almost as soon as she says it. 

Almost. 

But it doesn't make it a lie. 

"Ah, you  _ want _ to act the victim?" 

"I don't need to, you're doing a fine job of it yourself. Go lick your wounds, it doesn't matter to me." 

She slid back in her chair, watching out the corner of her eye as his legs shifted. In a swift and fluid movement, Asriel suddenly stood to tower over her, and instead of looking away, she rose to her feet too. 

"What is it? “You risk your land, your title, your family name.” Marisa asked, lacking the stern coldness in her voice now that she was face to face with him again. “Don’t you want to stick the dagger in, to twist it?"

"I-" 

He sighed again, letting his face tip forwards over hers, and she felt like she could pretend that they were anywhere else, before the child, before the truth was discovered, before anyone else had some sort of claim on knowledge of their relationship. The brightness in his eyes had been replaced by a dull sheen of tiredness and his ever-present shadow of arrogance tucked inside his mouth to be bestowed with his wit and smiles had disintegrated. 

She leans closer to bridge the gap until their foreheads rested against each other, feeling the warmth of his skin on hers. It felt too dangerous to move, and although it was an ingrained and utterly unconscious habit to simply press herself closer, Marisa felt the distance between them more than ever. 

"I don't  _ want  _ to be the victim, Asriel." Her hand drifted upwards to touch the knot of his tie, and her fingertip pushed it ever so slightly to the left, as if she were straightening it, feeling his exhales on the back of her hand. "I meant it, though. Say what you need to say."

"I already did-"

He cut himself off, but she saw the echo of his unsaid words,  _ my love _ , and hated how much she wanted them to reach her. 

When Asriel looks back at her, the meaning is as plain as day. All their moments tucked between bedsheets or whispered conversations in the open, all the wild speculation and intangible plans they had skirted around finally dissolved. 

"What you need to say here. To  _ them _ ."

In a small, dark corner of her heart, Marisa wished that he would refuse. That maybe he would turn her down, fly into a rage and storm out of the holding room, declare wild things to the crowds gathered outside, to stand and swear in front of the court, under the full weight of the Authority’s laws and reason, and choose  _ her _ .

He continued to stare silently at her, and she felt pinned under his steady gaze. The brightness in his eyes hadn't returned, but she noticed how Stelmaria had raised herself back up to her paws, tail flicking steadily in anticipation as he considered her words. The snow leopard was surprisingly quiet for once, and had allowed her daemon to rest a single paw on her shoulder, although not to embrace her like he so often did. 

Asriel only spoke after he had leaned back, hands brushing over her sleeves, before dropping down by his sides, “Alright. If that’s what you want.” 

And before she could find her tongue and say anything else, the door opened and the clerk ushered him out to take to the stand. 


	7. do i look moderate to you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she does a gone girl on Edward, and smug Marisa is very smug  
> that’s murder baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trope fill: wearing each other’s clothes

She was well aware of the smugness resting between her lips and spilling over into her brightening eyes. Morning light spilled through the gap between the curtains and struck her forehead and buried itself in her hair, warming her slowly and fanning out across the pillow to brush across Asriel's face too.

Sleep left Marisa slowly, and as she came back to herself, she reached for his discarded shirt unceremoniously dumped on the floor and draped it over her shoulders. Climbing out of the warm bed and the soft covers was a harder challenge, but she got to her feet and pushed one curtain back, watching as he rolled away from the rosy light. Stelmaria, on the other hand, rose and moved to sit by the window. Her daemon joined his, and they curled up together to watch the sun rise over the Belacqua Estate gardens.

"Isn't that a sight." Marisa quipped as she bent to collect the breakfast tray Thorold had left outside the master bedroom.

She placed it on her side table, pouring a fresh cup of chocolatl. The steam rose over the thick, creamy liquid and she left it to cool while picking up a copy of the morning's newspaper, bringing it back to the bed to read 

As she unfolded it out and looked down at Edward Coulter's horrified face snapped in the middle of his arrest, for her murder, there was a satisfying feeling warming her chest. Her pride blazed fiercely, like she had been dipped into the sun as she rolled up his too-long shirtsleeves and read on.

Her smile grew wide, lips thinning out a little to reveal her teeth behind. On the plush carpet below, her daemon paused his stroking to tilt his head backwards and return the grin.

“Murder, Most Immoral." Asriel read over her shoulder.

He shuffled against the pillows until he was upright enough to press a kiss to her bare shoulder peeking out from under his shirt collar. His sleep-tousled hair brushed against her chin, and she could smell the remnants of her perfume mingled with his cologne.

"It would have been nothing short of it if I hadn't acted." Her voice is bitter at the thought and there was a hiss from underneath the bed that mirrored her feelings exactly.

Her daemon was not content to trail around after Edward's dog daemon, a step behind, for the rest of their lives. 

Her thoughts drift on the blurred edges of her consciousness. "If I had stayed, gave into the fear and pretended the baby was his..."

Marisa remembers the taste of that fear, brittle and metallic on her tongue once she realised the shape of her life. A minister's wife. It had risen violently and threatened to obliterate her sanity, but she hadn't given in. When she emerged from that brief turmoil, collected and decidedly iron-willed; ready to mould her future with her own hands and blood. She aimed to free herself and ensure her husband was utterly ruined in a spectacular fall from grace, unrivalled in modern history.

"It was him, or me." She looked at Asriel, with his bemused but prideful smirk, knowing he’d never really understand. "I chose myself."

He dropped another kiss on her warm skin, “And now you’ve got away with it.”

“Got away with it?” Her dark eyebrows fly up, and she knew he was enjoying her mild outrage. “I planned and executed it perfectly...but I suppose I have to give credit where credit is due.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, my husband is so laughably predictable, he walked straight into this all by himself.”

Asriel’s mouth twitched, and she leant back against the headboard to unfold the paper and finished reading the morning report. The case was being wound up and the final statements would be delivered by the judge later that morning. There was even speculation that Edward would serve time, perhaps even be stripped off his title and money.

It was poor form to murder your pregnant wife in cold blood.

It was very poor form for the household help to find streaks of blood and a half-destroyed diary chronicling said wife’s tale of woe, hinting at her fear about her paranoid husband amidst the good news of her growing bundle of joy.

She did, however, miss out the part where said bundle of joy was a result from her extra-marital affair, but those details weren’t overly important in framing her husband for her death.

Edward never understood her, never realised that she needed more freedom and the chance to follow her own path. The child was merely a push, a deadline to manage. It hadn't been planned but wasn't entirely unwelcome, because she knew she was a different woman to her own mother.

“Remind me never to cross you, my love.”

She returned his kiss, fingers brushed against his cheek and curling up into his hair. "As long as you don't plan to, _we_ won't have any problems."


	8. out of reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marisa was an image of beauty, like a frozen waterfall or Arctic hoarfrost glittering under starlight. The little blue flowers tucked within her dark curls glisten as the cloud ice melted from them. He aches with the longing to reach out, to touch her cheek with his hand, to feel the coolness of her skin under his warm palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this is just my super loose interpretation of the trope to write witch!Marisa  
> trope: height difference

Marisa was an image of beauty, like a frozen waterfall or Arctic hoarfrost glittering under starlight. The little blue flowers tucked within her dark curls glisten as the cloud ice melted from them. He aches with the longing to reach out, to touch her cheek with his hand, to feel the coolness of her skin under his warm palm. 

Stelmaria darted off first, clods of snow thrown up as she ran to Marisa’s daemon who leapt from his witch’s shoulder, and he only watched as they chased each other through the snow. But her descent is more graceful, and she landed barefoot on the snow-covered outcrop just out of sight from the base. 

"Why do you stay away?" Asriel asked eventually, and credits himself when his voice doesn't shake.

Even though he leaves as the thaw arrives and returns each autumn when the ice stakes its claim again, she sought to keep her distance over the years. He had left letters at the embassy in Trollesund and waited for their reply, but there had been nothing.

There were books in the Arctic Institute's library that contained accounts of witches who could leave marks or powerful magics with allies, bespelled flowers or pieces of their cloud pine to draw them back; but he had nothing of hers to tie her to him, or vice versa. And if he were able to admit it to himself- that he could tie himself to another, perhaps it would be her; but they were equally boundless. 

"You cannot comprehend the way I see you; your life is a passing season, warm sunshine that fades into decay and then an eternal winter." 

He looked at her unchanged face, searching for the woman that had chosen him as her lover, and cannot see anything other than her, "But do you deny it? They say witches feel more strongly than men. Does your heart not pull you back, here, to me? As mine has done for you."

She paused, and it sent cracks through his stilled breath and frozen thoughts. He had lived years with this unshakeable idea of her, and yet when she spoke again, she almost sounded regretful. 

"Your time is fleeting, precious in a way mine is not."

"I have missed you." Asriel inched forward to reach out to her, as though she were an Arctic fox, and just as easy to spook. "You haven't changed."

Her voice is warmer, her smile almost fond as she leaned into his gloved touch at her waist and on her cheek. "I have thought of you often. The young explorer, striking out into the unknown, parsing the secrets in the arctic winds that call to you."

But Marisa knew she was right, witches never carried broken hearts inside their chests. They died from fiercer pursuits, from battle and daring deeds. It was humans with their mortal lives, afflicted by the weight of their emotions and disease and old age. There's a fragility in the warm blood pumping around his body, in the limited breaths that send puffs of warm air across the distance between them. Somewhere between them, in the gap they had closed once more, that granule of affection she held for him sparked again, undamped by her efforts to keep him away. 

* * *

She melts, again. 

Just as she did twenty years ago, when he was new to her world, and she was curious about the view from his bright eyes. 

He does too.

* * *

A year later, Asriel looks up into the swirling snow just as he had done ever since they had crossed over the invisible to boundary line of the Arctic Circle and metaphorically planted their boots on witch territory. Waiting with bated breath for a slip of black to cross the ever-grey skies or the whisper of cloud pine slicing through the air in a sharp descent had uncovered a deeper longing in him that went further than any accolades he'd ever had ambitions for, or his hatred for the Magisterium men that were ever circling like vultures hoping to pick his carcass clean. 

Finally, the tell-tale sign of black silk came floating through the air. One patch of colour amidst a sea of white flurries descended towards him, and he felt an odd relief in seeing her again. Beside him, Stelmaria impatiently huffed out clouds of warm air. 

A year had been long enough. 

"My love." He called up, and then his feet faltered on the frozen snow in surprise.

He had not expected her to change, but as her feet touched the ground and her monkey daemon climbed down to race across the fresh snow to greet Stelmaria, he saw that she had. 

Not in her beauty, that remained as glacial as ever. 

There was something swaddled in her arm, tucked close to her breast in a way that confessed a certain treasure. But to a witch there was no greater treasure than freedom and the open skies, and the grim slant of her lips unbalanced him as she approached. The answer to the puzzle revealed itself from within the blue and green fabrics, wool and satin and silk, closely bundled together, and the small face peering out. 

"Asriel, you are here." Marisa spoke softly, drifting the last few steps to reach his embrace. The strength in her stride and force of the unearthly power she had always cloaked herself in seemed to have chipped now that her bare feet had touched the ground, but she didn’t falter in pressing her lips to his, and neither did he.

She broke the kiss first, and then pushed the baby against his chest until his arms rose up to wrap themselves around her. He cannot recall if he had ever held a child before, and yet it almost felt natural. 

"You must take the child. It is not safe for her here." The fierceness in her voice startled him further. Her words were echoed by a short shriek from her daemon before he was quieted by Stelmaria’s attentions. 

"How do you mean?" 

Marisa touched the baby's cheek tenderly, before drawing back and shaking her head so gently, if he hadn't seen the resolve in her eyes, he might have thought she would snatch the child up into her arms once more and take flight.

"She takes after you more than me." There was a flattening to her voice, and the ice took hold in her once more. "Although she is a witch's daughter, she is no witch. You must take her and keep her safe until the time is right."

"Wait, I don't understand. I haven't seen you for over a year, and now you tell me this child is mine, why not write, why keep this secret-. 

A haughtiness struck down on her features, twisting them with a cold passion, and there was a heat underneath he doesn't wish to stoke any further, not with knowing what her fury could bring about. "She is yours. Lyra, is yours."

Asriel held his breath, truly feeling the weight in his arms, before exhaling sharply as if it would help dispel the shock ringing within him. "Lyra."

"But she is not safe." The shiver that fell upon her could not from the cold. "My sisters have either fallen against the Magisterium or fallen in line. I must choose, and I choose _life_ , and I believe that Yambe-Akka will not turn me away for making that choice."

"You choose to side with those who have killed your sisters?"

"My sisters have long memories and recall when we once held court over Geneva ourselves, flew over the alpine lakes. We witches have existed as long as you and your Authority can remember. We seek the same answers when we listen for Yambe-Akka’s call."

"But the Magisterium of all things? You see how they manoeuvre the bears, how they view witches as barbarian women on wing. You'd do better to stand against them, with allies, with-" 

"With you?" 

"Would you?"

She was silent for a long time, and he almost begins to think that he had overstepped the mark by trying to entreat her to his cause, a storm in a teacup of _this_ century, when she had lived far longer, saw into the past farther. 

"If I must admit it to someone, then fine, I choose my daughter. You must keep her safe, Asriel, and I must return to my sisters."

There was torment spread across her face and threaded deep into her voice. "What can a child do?"

"There is a prophecy, and she has a destiny, one which will mark us all. For that she must live, and I must suffer this." The haughtiness returned with a twist of her lips, and yet the frown eased away when she glanced down at the child in his arms. “Her daemon has no name.” 

“Pantalaimon.” Stelmaria answered back instantly. 

Her daemon scampered back across the snow to perch around her shoulders and let out a wail that set Asriel's teeth on edge. Stelmaria bristled, frozen to the spot. When Marisa tried to hush him, his claw caught against her shoulder to draw blood, and his hisses were loud and fretful. 

“Pantalaimon.” Marisa whispered as she touched the sleeping baby's cheek for a final time and then let her arm drop. "We must go. We've lingered long enough."

"Not long at all, my love." 

When the invention of the photo plates occurred, many thought that their essence or something integral to themselves could become trapped within the flash of the anbaric bulb and the oil slick emulsion that would go on to reveal a likeness that was not alive. The bitter truth of it was that Asriel had hungered for a glimpse of her, a touch, a scrawled word or two sent by nighthawk, just as he always did. Marisa had captured him, and staked a claim on his beating heart, an organ he hadn't given much thought of until he had met her, and now had been lashed tighter to her by the existence of their child.

"Keep her safe." 

"I will." 

Her feet barely left the ground before he reached out for her, and grasped hold of her wrist as tight as he could. Then she was back, grounded, and pressed close against him. His mouth found hers in a heartbeat and the whole world could have fallen away into nothing. He wouldn't have cared. 

"This drives me mad, Marisa." Asriel said when they finally broke away, with her resting her forehead against his. "These partings will be the death of me."

She smiled back. It was bittersweet. Although he had imagined her face over the months and years, he wished it were not like this. He knew it would haunt him. 

"I shouldn't say this," she said, kissing him twice more and stealing his breath and his heart all over again. "But I've read the stars. For what little they say about fate, we'll meet again, and not be parted."

"I'll wait for it." 

With that promise sealed with another kiss, she pulled away for the final time, her cloud pine gripped in her hand as she rose up into the falling snow while he remained grounded. 

Her last words to him before she arched up into the skies were, "I will too."


End file.
